Comment by kodah | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kodah | Hacker News Reader

It's a letter to AT&T that encourages them to do something about Fox and OANN. I'd say sure, do something about them, but let's also look inward.

There was a lot of misinformation abound after the Capitol Riots that was simply there to stir up Democrats and a lot of this information was very racially angled. Though Democrats play up the death of the Capital police officer now, their constituents were absolutely promoting conspiracy theories about the Capitol police doing nothing or the FBI intentionally not showing up. I won't begin to assess why conspiracy theories were abound when literal conspiracy theorists were invading the Capital, that's probably worth its own discussion. Put these concepts (racialized rhetoric and anti-police conspiracy theories) together and it's no wonder why the country broke for another day or two.

If you want to clean up Fox and OANN, I'm down, but let's make sure you're cleaning up all the grass roots sources of your constituents misinformation too.

It's much more gray than your presenting. There were numerous LEOs amongst the rioters, and many of the early videos people were seeing were cops taking selfies with rioters and cops standing to one side as the rioters walked in. Meanwhile the white House was slow footing any kind of response. The extent of the Capitol police resistance want really clear until things had settled down.

Would you be able to give specific examples of left-focused misinformation on the capitol riots, that is specific news articles from "trusted partisan" sources (CNN, etc) containing unsupported conspiracy theories?

The fire extinguisher attack turned out to be BS.

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/capitol-police-officers-...

Does that meet the standard for being an unverified conspiracy theory? It seems that the story came from a source they were keeping anonymous (fairly conventional in journalism, especially when reporting things in real time) and was promptly updated as more news came in.

It's worth noting that there is fairly extensive video of an unhelmeted officer getting hit in the head with a fire extinguisher thrown during a brawl. I don't know if that officer has been identified as Sicknick or not, but that particular event (an officer getting hit in the head with a fire extinguisher) did happen. Separately, we know Sicknick did physically engage with the rioters, as the official US Capitol Police statement cited in the article you linked said "Officer Brian D. Sicknick passed away due to injuries sustained while on-duty."

So, _a_ fire extinguisher attack did happen (among many other attacks on officers during the riot). An officer did die as a result of injuries sustained during the riot. An anonymous source linked those two events, a link which now appears to have been incorrect. News sites which covered the events in question have effectively released retractions and calls to wait for more evidence.

What more would you want them to do? They can only report on the facts as known at the time, and release updates if those later change. Both of those things were done.

This is an entirely different situation from Fox and OANN alleging massive conspiracies and voter fraud and continuing to hold that position for political reasons despite a lack of evidence.

There is plenty of evidence of voting irregularities. An irregularity only becomes fraud when it was done with criminal intent.

The overarching issue with normalization of censorship is that it becomes difficult to tell when evidence does not exist and when it does exist but was censored.

https://hereistheevidence.com/

That website is not a quality source of information. Media Bias/Fact Check rates it as questionable, low quality, and far to the right: https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/here-is-the-evidence/

Mediabiasfactcheck.com Claims that hereistheevidence.com is "low quality", because it links to "low quality" sources. But Mediabiasfactcheck has links to those same sources, so by it's own argument Mediabiasfactcheck is "low quality".

Please don't take the above argument too seriously, my point is that so many of the fact check orgs are riddled with logical fallacies. In this case we have guilt by association, ad hominem, argument from authority, and appeal to motive.

I think a fact check system that did not rely on logical fallacy would be quite useful, however I have yet to find one.

All of the "evidence" here is from sources like the Washington Examiner and "The RF angle" Are you kidding me?

If you want real evidence of "irregularities" look elsewhere, its certainly not here.

You’ll be hard pressed to find a media organization that actually bothered to investigate things instead of immediately claiming Trump’s allegations were false.

Personally, I think that’s the primary reason the riot happened.

There's plenty of evidence/public court rulings which thoroughly debunk these claims.

Why should I believe anything that supports trump. He said "we have the virus under control." Yea, let's believe his cronies. Give me a break.

The update clearly shows that a “fact” was not reported and what was reported was a rumor that could not be verified because it was in no way ever true. I’d expect sober reporting to stick to assertions with real documentation or multiple unrelated attestations of direct knowledge. I’d also expect that a news outlet would treat assertions made by police or any organization as objectively often false and always self-interested. As it stands it is all click-bait manure and the retractions are just legal CYA.

That's a long conclusion to make.

The statement that it had not been determined that blunt force trauma specifically caused Officer Sicknick's death doesn't make the attack BS - there's video footage of him being hit with one. And dying within 24 hours from a hemorrhagic stroke is definitely not enough to rule out the proximal impact of fire extinguishers and other implements used to beat him.

"there's video footage of him being hit with one."

You should forward that video footage to law enforcement right away, because they don't even have it. I'll even cite CNN, because I assume you believe they are trustworthy.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/02/politics/brian-sicknick-charg...

"Investigators are struggling to build a federal murder case regarding fallen US Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick, vexed by a lack of evidence that could prove someone caused his death as he defended the Capitol during last month's insurrection. Authorities have reviewed video and photographs that show Sicknick engaging with rioters amid the siege but have yet to identify a moment in which he suffered his fatal injuries, law enforcement officials familiar with the matter said. "

"According to one law enforcement official, medical examiners did not find signs that the officer sustained any blunt force trauma, so investigators believe that early reports that he was fatally struck by a fire extinguisher are not true."

Oh, comprehension.

> evidence that could prove someone caused his death

> have yet to identify a moment in which he suffered his fatal injuries

Neither of these things say "he did not die as a result of injuries sustained in the riots".

> "According to one law enforcement official, medical examiners did not find signs that the officer sustained any blunt force trauma, so investigators believe that early reports that he was fatally struck by a fire extinguisher are not true."

No, the ME, who is yet to release finalized verdict, stated that the officer did not die "from blunt force trauma".

> that he was fatally struck by a fire extinguisher

Well no. He wasn't. He died the next day in hospital.

From a hemorrhagic stroke. Which could have been caused or exacerbated by non-lethal beating.

You literally commented that there is video of the officer being struck by a fire extinguisher.

“The statement that it had not been determined that blunt force trauma specifically caused Officer Sicknick's death doesn't make the attack BS - there's video footage of him being hit with one.”

Does the word “one” not refer to a fire extinguisher? Did I fail to comprehend your claim?

Assuming the video you refer to does show the fire extinguisher attack, then law enforcement needs your help. Investigators are trying to find out if the officer was attacked and who did it. Please share the video with them instead of arguing with me on the internet!

https://nypost.com/2021/01/11/video-shows-capitol-rioter-hit...

Right there. With a nice big red circle around him.

Since you said: "The statement that it had not been determined that blunt force trauma specifically caused Officer Sicknick's death doesn't make the attack BS - there's video footage of him being hit with one."

"him" must unambiguously mean Officer Sicknick according to you.

From your source.

"It’s unclear if the cop who was plunked was Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, 42."

Oh, comprehension.

Also, the article you cite is over a month old and much newer information is now available. Including the statement that:

"Authorities have reviewed video and photographs that show Sicknick engaging with rioters amid the siege but have yet to identify a moment in which he suffered his fatal injuries, law enforcement officials familiar with the matter said."

But who knows. Maybe investigators have never heard of the NY Post. Make sure you send them a link to that article and video ASAP! You really cracked the case!

The "five people died!!" narrative.

Three of them were just people dying because walking around while not in the best of health. One was an unarmed woman shot in the neck by police.

So really.. the rioters can only have rightfully been the cause of one death of someone not involved in the riot or protest.

Greenwald has a good write up regarding left-focused misinformation. Fire extinguisher, zip ties, firearms, etc.

https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-false-and-exaggerated-c...

This article doesn't disprove much.

Being "pro-trump" doesn't make the death not count. 3 of the five died because of the protests - it doesn't matter which side. You can argue that a stroke/heart attack may not have happened in a non-high pressure environment.

We don't need any more evidence than the mountains of video of people storming the capital. It's bad enough as is, it could have been far, far worse.

The difference between someone dying because of a stroke and someone dying because they were bludgeoned to death with a blunt object over the course of several minutes while thousands of people stood idly by is stark.

Getting bludgeoned can cause strokes, among various other more and less pressing medical issues.

It's still murder when the victim dies in the hospital instead of at the scene.

Yes this is true, but apparently he wasn't actually bludgeoned with anything although it was widely reported that he was. The current theory is chemical agents had something to do with it (like pepper or bear spray).

https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/02/politics/brian-sicknick-charg...

>According to one law enforcement official, medical examiners did not find signs that the officer sustained any blunt force trauma, so investigators believe that early reports that he was fatally struck by a fire extinguisher are not true.

We've got lots of video of people being bludgeoned that day while thousands of people either stood by or encouraged it. It seems like the specifics of the injuries and their consequences is actually the silly thing to be arguing about.

Of course - but that just makes a bad thing worse.

The capital riots were bad. No amount of far right-wing sugar coating is going to change that.

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